PESHAWAR: Centre to reform child beggars fails to deliver
By Sadia Qasim Shah
PESHAWAR, May 4: Fifteen-year-old Daulat, a child begger, was picked up four times from the streets and sent to the Darul-Kafala centre, but each time he started begging again.
The centre, set up by the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal government two years ago, operates by picking up child beggars such as Daulat from the streets and makes them undergo a two-month reform programme. The centre has had little success yet due to lack of social support and an ineffective reform process.
Daulat, now an experienced ‘reformed’ beggar, adopts different styles of begging at different hours of the day. He sells floral bangles in the evening to escape from social welfare department officials, who visit the city at that time ‘to capture’ child beggars.
Daulat, who begs near the Peshawar Club chowk, is an expert at contorting his arms and says that his favourite position is to sit like a handicapped person with dysfunctional legs. He says that by ‘acting as a child handicapped by polio and dragging his body on the road’ he is able to draw sympathy from many people and earns anywhere between Rs2000-3000 per day.
“Why should I work for a meagre daily wage when this hard labour of dragging my body on the road in hot weather conditions brings me so much income?” the child beggar asked.
A resident of Pawakay village located in the suburbs of Peshawar, Daulat comes from a broken family. His widowed mother married a man whose young sons evicted him and his younger brother from their house, and they both ended up begging on the streets. Like Daulat, there are many other cases of child beggars in the city, many of whom are abandoned by their own families due to different reasons, chief of which is poverty. The children, after being taken to the Dar-ul-Kafala centre, spend about 2-3 months there, but many end up begging again as their families do not support them.
There is no evaluation or monitoring system in place to check on the child beggars after they complete their reformation and go back to their families, says a social welfare officer.
“Very few children find jobs or stick to them because daily wages are so low that they can make almost double that amount through begging, so they resort to their old ways,” the officer said.
Suleiman, 12 and hailing from the Bala Madi locality, had been to Dar-ul-Kafala thrice. He said that he ran away from his home due to harsh treatment meted out by his elder brother.
“I neither feel like working nor anybody gave me a job, so I not only beg but sometime I also steal things,” admitted Suleiman, adding that he was also into drugs.
Khalid, 10, said he was forced by his step-mother to start earning for the family, and since he could not find any work, he resorted to begging.
